GatesGate

Who The Hell Is Jon Caramanica?

Posted in: Uncategorized | 1165Comments (0)http://waltbennett.com/wordpress/?p=1165Who+The+Hell+Is+Jon+Caramanica%3F2010-03-01+20%3A43%3A37Walt+Bennett

Well now.

Thirty-four years old, 12 or so years out of Harvard. Writes about music for the New York Times.

Quite white.

Yep, I absolutely agree that Jon Caramanica is qualified to tell us what’s wrong with John Mayer, and to assure us that “what Mr. Mayer might perceive as a progressive understanding of race can be just as shortsighted and pat as a conservative one. It also shows just how easy it is to presume that cultural intimacy means comprehension.”

Let me just ask now: Has Caramanica spoken to Mayer about his true views? Did Mayer intend to elaborate more in his Playboy interview? Was anything left on the cutting room floor?

I’ll answer my own question: Caramanica has no clue and doesn’t care. He had one motive in his “review” of Mayer’s MSG concert (which Caramanica loved, by the way; the show, I mean): To kick up as much dust as possible in the hope that somebody would care about his opinion of the weeks-old, let-it-die-already stupid stuff Mayer said - and acknowledged as such.

Nope. For Caramanica, that’s the entire problem:

But it’s also the last significant public statement he has made about the controversy, a silence that is threatening to become too much of a comfort zone.

In the last week or so there’s been little conversation about Mr. Mayer’s faux pas. The result is an implicit and worrisome approval of Mr. Mayer’s quick fix, as if it were enough.

Shamefully, that part of the interview drew far wider attention than his egregious discussions of race. First, there was the use of the slur, regrettable even though he did so ostensibly to demonstrate a point about the limits of racial understanding. (”It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it,” he wrote on his Twitter page.)

But what followed in the interview was even more troubling. “What is being black?” he said. “It’s making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that’s seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you’ll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude’s.”

It’s a stunningly naïve perspective…

From the outside looking in, everything is more or less as it was before. And that comfort, that status quo, is dangerous.

Let’s recap:

Worrisome.

Shameful.

STUNNINGLY NAIVE.

Why so worried, shamed, stunned, Jon?

Oh, right: Because you know better than Mayer does what it means to be black in America.

Which we can tell by looking at your picture. Or from the fact that you hang with black musicians. Or from the explanations you provided in this hit job.

Please, Mr. “I went to Harvard so I could write music reviews”, please oh please tell us all that you know about race which eludes Mayer.

Just start with this, Jon:

“What is being black?”

As if we didn’t know that the world is full of fat, stupid idiots.

But here is my real question: Why does Mother Times allow people such as Caramanica to wander so far from their mandate, especially when it’s for clear self-aggrandizing purposes?

Or is it Mother Times’ opinion that Caramanica has elevated this discourse and shared with us something which is so meaningful that they just had to let it through?

More likely: Do they even acknowledge such a thing anymore as journalistic standards?

Walt Bennett @ March 1, 2010

I Had A Feeling.

Posted in: Current Events | 1154Comments (0)http://waltbennett.com/wordpress/?p=1154I+Had+A+Feeling.2010-02-22+21%3A01%3A54Walt+Bennett

I just had a gut feeling that they would get away with it.

Nevermind DNA on the baton.

Nevermind an actual fellow officer coming forward to “rat” on one of his own.

Nevermind behavior from the victim completely consistent with the wounds he suffered.

Nevermind a hospital report which found a significant wound in the victim’s anus.

Nevermind the blood on his hands.

Don’t ask me how I knew that the perverted sicko New York cop, Richard Kern, would get away with sexually assaulting Michael Mineo in a Brooklyn subway station in October, 2008.

And don’t think I jumped to any conclusions based on press accounts. I followed up with the actual trial testimony as well as the physical evidence. Testimony from friends and complete strangers who happened upon the scene. The hospital report. There was not one piece of evidence or testimony, other than from the accused, which was in any way inconsistent.

In other words, there was no other story for the evidence to add up to.

Not to a New York City jury, not when it comes to cops versus a Hispanic, pot-smoking tattoo artist.

The jury’s one sentence statement:

“We found reasonable doubt.”

Walt Bennett @ February 22, 2010

I’m Doing Some Math…

Posted in: Uncategorized | 1150Comments (0)http://waltbennett.com/wordpress/?p=1150I%27m+Doing+Some+Math...2010-02-21+19%3A13%3A17Walt+Bennett

I want to know what 5 million times $30,000 is. I think it’s $150 billion.

30 times 5 million is 150 million. A thousand millions is a billion. Yup. That’s right.

Let’s see. TARP cost $900 billion. The Recovery Act cost $700 billion.

That’s 1.7 TRILLION dollars, my friend. Stack those dollars as high as the moon.

For One tenth of that we could pay 5 million people a $30,000 salary. With $20 billion left over for incidentals.

I’m no economist but I know that labor is roughly one quarter of the cost of doing business, so we would actually need $600 billion for our “company”, which is still about one third of TARP+Recovery.

Now, what will our company do with all this labor and capital?

- Rebuild the national electric grid to improve on the senseless amount of energy lost in transmission, and to bring clean sources such as solar and wind from places like the desert to where it’s needed.

- Build a national network of reservoirs, aquifers and pipes to capture enough precipitation to keep the entire country flowing with water, no matter how “dry” their conditions may become.

- Build a network of waste water treatment plants, which produce two important things: clean water and fertilizer. Build enough of them at a high enough standard to return it to the water cycle.

- Build solar. Build wind. Build nuclear.

- Build fast train tracks. When fast trains are quicker than planes and can run on renewable energy, we will be able to wind down our reliance on jets, which are expensive and require fossil fuels.

- Construct new buildings and rehab existing buildings to become as energy efficient as possible. Require existing government buildings to have these makeovers.

There are others. Feel free to add your own. Increase and decrease the size of the work force as economic conditions change.

Put workers who want to work back to work. Rebuild this great country. Leave our children in better condition than the world was as we found it. Learn the lessons of a civilized people and adapt accordingly.

Get stuff done!

Who’s with me?

Walt Bennett @ February 21, 2010